Democracy depends on a government empowered to govern through administration. This administrative state is made up of the vast array of departments and agencies that conduct the essential business of government, from national defense and disaster response to implementing and enforcing public policies of every kind.
In their latest book, Ungoverning: The Attack on the Administrative State and the Politics of Chaos, political scientists Russell Muirhead and his co-author, Nancy L. Rosenblum, chronicle the reactionary movement intent on dismantling the administrative state. They show how ungoverning disables capacities that took generations to build – including the administration of free and fair elections – and how the movement threatens us all, regardless of partisanship or ideological leaning.
Russell Muirhead is the Robert Clements Professor of Democracy and Politics at Dartmouth College. His previous book, also co-authored by Nancy Rosenblum, is A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy.
